August 6

(Photo by NationalGeographic)

Love abides.

It's time, past time, to disarm.

And while we're at it, how about a constructive alternative:



(I'm sorry for the brevity. All the words I know are not enough to encompass the darkness of that day nor that of the days that will follow if we fail to stop following the path of destruction our species walks now.)

On and On and On and On...

Yesterday the bombs blew up in Sadr City. And Dora. Husseiniya, Malif. A man lost a hand, another man a leg. A woman, both hands, a child, his life. Over one hundred and sixty people dead or injured in a single day, a single city. Today, a different neighborhood, Kadhimiya, eight dead, twenty wounded. And in New Baghdad, a grocery store burnt down when someone lobbed a grenade at it: in that instance, thank goodness, no one was harmed.

Glass and steel and fire and pain. Flesh and blood and hearts and minds. A bit of rain, a rush of wind. Blossoms falling, the scent of a rose petal. Friends in Mosul get engaged and a pal in Baghdad gets a holiday when traffic stops in his neck of the woods, due to Obama's visit. Life is so precious, so full of the unexpected. So fragile. Sami has this song going through his head. I post it here for him, for all of us: it is about us all.